An Inexplicable Vote

Yesterday, the House passed the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act, which is essentially a hodgepodge of tax provisions, most of which extend existing tax breaks, such as the R&D tax credit and production incentives for renewable fuels. There are also a few new items, such as a tax cut specifically for trial lawyers who work on a contingency basis. These tax breaks are offset with $55 billion in tax increases on hedge fund managers and multinational corporations.

The bill passed easily – virtually all Democrats supported it, along with a few dozen Republicans.

As reported in CongressDaily (subscription required), Republican Congressman David Hobson supported the bill with the following justification:

“Probably the responsible vote is ‘no,’ but how do you explain that in a media that’s frantic over gasoline prices? Frankly, this has nothing to do with gasoline prices, but you can’t explain it, and it taxes the rich guys,” Hobson said.

Incidentally, Congressman Hobson hails from a “safe” GOP district in Ohio. He has been in Congress since 1990 and has won reelection each cycle with no less than 61 percent of the vote. He already announced that he will retire at the end of the current Congress. Nonetheless, for political reasons, he supported a bill he knows to be unmeritorious.

If a retiring congressman from a safe district cannot muster up the gumption to oppose an admittedly bad bill that contains a hefty tax hike, what does that mean for the state of Congress?